It has been a problem to detect the purity of silver in a short period of time and it has usually been necessary to apply silver detecting solutions to bar silver or other large pieces of silver and rub the material on the silver for a considerable period of time or to wait for a considerable period of time for the desired indications to transpire. Usually the silver detecting formulations of the prior art have been used to induce certain colors to appear on the surface of the metal so as to determine the relative purity of the metal and thereby detect the relative value of a given piece of silver.
The prior art has heretofore required considerable inconvenience and time consuming effort and this has been an inconvenience to the necessity to rapidly detect the relative purity of the piece of silver.
Various prior art chemical formulas for the detection of silver have been extremely limited because they tend to show various colors among other metals which are confusing especially when silver happens to be mixed with them or alloyed with them.